You Belong To Me – Smock Alley – Review
by Frank L.

Dates – 6 – 21 Dec | Main Space
You Belong to Me – Written by Rory Nolan

The set covers the entire stage of the main theatre in Smock Alley. It contains a large domestic living space with a hall door in the centre and an internal door on each side. There is something unusual about the arrangement of the furniture and fittings. There are in fact two kitchen areas one newer than the other. There is a broad yellow line which bisects the floor and where it encounters the dining room table it bisects that as well.

Pato (Liam Carney) and his wife Patty (Clara Simpson) have just started to live entirely separate lives in the same house after almost forty years of marriage. This new arrangement appears to have been sanctioned by a coroner who dealt with the inquest into Pato’s mother who died unexpectedly.

As you enter the theatre there is a handyman (Kwaku Fortune) on stage who is carrying out various alterations to Pato’s side of the broad yellow line. Patty enters and the conversation between her and the handyman makes it clear that the relationship between Pato and Patty is one of unbridled hostility. Pato enters then through the hall door and more discord arises between him and the handyman over money and between him and Patty over anything and everything that has happened between them.

It transpires then that Pato’s mother has left Patty a legacy in her will and the lawyer (Kyle Hixon) who comes to deliver the good news introduces a new man into the set up and also creates an unlikely eternal triangle. The plot gambols along merrily with unlikely happenings. In the set-tos between Pato and Patty, great use is made of the little word “Wall” which points to the invisible barrier between the two sides of the room. Both Carney and Simpson employ it to great comic effect.

Alan Farquharson’s set with its broad yellow line exposes the fracture at the centre of this unhappy marriage and it is a clever device to depict the Wall which divides the space. Also the sofa, armchair and other furniture coupled with an eclectic collection of household goods provide the right atmosphere for a house in which this unhappy pair has lived.

Carney and Simpson’s bickering keeps the audience engaged in a great deal of laughter and a general feel-good state. Their timing is excellent. The ending of the piece is unexpectedly bleak and comes as quite a shock. It challenges the notion that this is a comedy which is how its publicity describes it. The play ends in a dark place which is at odds with what went before.

CAST: Liam Carney, Kwaku Fortune, Kyle Hixon, Clara Simpson

WRITTEN BY Rory Nolan
DIRECTED BY Lynne Parker
SET DESIGN BY Alan Farquharson
COSTUME DESIGN BY LaurA Fajardo Castro
LIGHTING DESIGN BY Sarah Jane Shiels
SOUND DESIGN BY Denis Clohessy